


Undulate, Come 'round Again

by azarias



Series: A future [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, James McGraw's gay rage, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 00:51:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14989172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azarias/pseuds/azarias
Summary: Admiral Hennessey faces death far from home.Death has a thing or two to say to him.





	Undulate, Come 'round Again

_They took everything from us. And then they called_ me _a monster? The moment I sign that pardon, the moment I ask for one, I proclaim to the world that they were right._

_This ends when I grant them my forgiveness, not the other way around_

*

Eoin Hennessey sat on a bunk and waited to die. Better men had died in worse surroundings, so he contrived to be unbothered.

The bunk was in a house, not a cell, a little stick-built thing with a thatched roof not unlike the one he had been born under, though this one was built for the tropical heat. If he stood on the bunk, he could see outside the gaps left under the roof to let the breeze in. At seventy, he was years past hoisting himself up and squeezing through the narrow space, and even if he had done, the guards outside would make short work of any escape. Besides, it was shaded and cool inside and sweltering outside. Better to pass the time here. 

It was remarkably easy to face death without fear when you'd already seen damnation. 

He'd seen clearly in the middle of that fight. Cannon-smoke and men screaming, shrill like Hell's own trumpets over the roaring guns. Vague shapes of boats in the water, piraguas that had swarmed out of a cove and caught his ship by the lee. 

His ship. That was a habit he ought to break, though it hardly mattered now. If it had been his ship, the crew would have damned well listened when he'd told them not to bother with the guns; the little boats moved too fast and were beneath their field of fire after a single round of shot. That was time the crew could have spent arming themselves against boarders, and they might not have panicked quite so much when the first grapples came over the rail. If it had been his ship.

And if he were a bloody admiral he'd've never been caught on a ship that small and lubberly. But he was a man of business now, paid to _consult_ with worried shipping companies about this ado in the Caribbean. And the Spanish were no closer than a hundred miles away — 

But it hadn't been Spanish who'd come for him.

There weren't supposed to be pirates stalking the Bahamas, either. That braggart Rogers had sworn that he'd done for them all, all the way to prison. But what else to call the men who'd rowed those fast boats up and swarmed his ship over the side? Half of them black, the rest white men so sunburnt they nearly matched, armed with everything from a cavalryman's sabre to a pair of antique matchlocks whose grips were carved from ivory. Pirates if Admiral Hennessey had ever hanged one. And when Eoin had seen their captain through the smoke, his own pistol had dropped from his hand.

This cell was too small. This hut, this wretched hovel that he was going to sit waiting in until he died, and _not soon enough_. He'd paced the length of it, six strides this way and that; it was more or less a circle. It was suffocating. A cot, a chair, a little round table with three legs, no two the same length. That part was an insult, he was sure. He could break off one of the legs and use it as a club. Perhaps he would get lucky and it'd break to a sharp point. Who knew how many men he could kill before they put him down?

An old man with shaking hands, poking feebly with a stick. What an honorable end.

He stood up anyway and stomped his feet on the wooden floor. It echoed hollowly. All the buildings here were built on platforms off the ground so they wouldn't rot. This was no rough camp. Someone called this place home. 

He stomped again, spiteful, to make some noise. Let the guards outside know he was still here, still alive. They still had to finish killing him. It was too fucking quiet. The men outside weren't talking. The birds sang nonsense and the mosquitos' low whine was more a feeling than a sound, like a toothache. You couldn't hear the sea from here. He had never liked the quiet. It gave him too much time to think.

He'd heard stories. Every sailor had. Hell, every tradesman with a penny to spare on a bit of printed rubbish had. Back when the Bahamas had belonged to pirates, there'd been among them a red-headed demon named Flint —

Flint had been in all the broadsheets, described in lurid detail. That was the problem with pirates: they were sloppy, bloodthirsty when they oughtn't be and merciful when they oughtn't, either. Cared about booty instead of a mission. They'd let whole shipsful of men go if they could get their treasure without killing them, or slaughter women and children if that turned a bigger profit. Scores, probably hundreds of people had been caught by Captain Flint and let go once he'd been done robbing them, and they'd told rubbish-mongers about his face.

Sneering, hook-nosed, fanged but also missing all his teeth, rot like a pauper's grave reeking from his breath. His eyes were either solid black, no whites at all, or else lit white-hot with hellfire. He was ten feet tall if he was an inch, and had winged henchmen who towered over him. Eoin had seen plenty of depictions. Sometimes a junior officer had included a drawing in his report to the admiralty about why this shipment or that had never made it into port. Caricatures. It was hilarious to anyone acquainted with the dirty, banal fact of a criminal or a common sailor. Demons indeed. Base human nature and desperation made quite enough evil in the world. 

Eoin had tossed away the sketches with a laugh. One more criminal. All the stories had agreed about the mane of red hair and the barely-leashed fury. And his particular care with the books that he stole. No one Eoin knew. 

The hut's door opened, and James stood there haloed in blinding sunlight just as he had stood wreathed in spray and gunsmoke. Demon among pirates. Captain Flint. James McGraw.

Eoin's knees felt weak because he was a damned coward who'd clung to life too long.

When James shut the door behind him, red slashes lingered in Eoin's dazzled vision. His cell wasn't so quiet anymore. The chair's legs scraped across the floorboards as James pulled it close; two men breathed much more loudly than one. James turned the chair around and sat down straddling it, his arms across its back. Half-blinded still, Eoin sat down on the cot.

James still wore his hair long. Down to his shoulders, tied roughly back. He had a scar on his brow that hadn't been there before. 

"We're debating killing you," James said, his tone low and factual. 

Eoin inclined his head. "I'm surprised there's debate."

James went on as if Eoin hadn't spoken. He still sounded like a London gentleman. He'd worked very hard on that. "The argument is that ransoming you would require that we reveal ourselves. If we say nothing, your disappearance will be blamed on the Spanish. That in turn will increase the pressure on the allies to extend the war here. The number of warships in the West Indies will increase, but so will the confusion, and that's to our advantage. Warships aren't a great deal of use against an enemy you don't know you have."

"And what enemy is that?"

James smiled without an ounce of humor. "My … partners and I represent a number of people who have been poorly served by the experience of empire. British and otherwise." He looked down at his hands. One was spread out, palm up, the other fiddling with his gaudy rings. Touching everything. That was an old habit; Eoin ought to have beaten it out of him, but he'd never had the heart. James had never quailed before a beating, anyway. Without looking up, James added, "Torture is a separate question. We don't know how much you might know."

"Much less than you probably think," Eoin said. No harm in telling the truth, though there was also probably no help in it. The one good thing about being old was it wouldn't take much in the way of torture to do him in. He hoped, anyway. "I'm retired, you know."

James looked up quickly, surprised. "Are you?"

Eoin spread his hands, shrugging. Let the liver spots speak for themselves. 

James was fiddling still, both hands in on it, all ten fingers tapping the back of the chair. "I never thought you would," James said.

Well that was a terrible thought. The future James had imagined for him: doddering, clinging to past glories and the rank of admiral, sitting around Whitehall with the other old men withering inside their musty uniforms and waiting for the day's most unfortunate midshipman to be dispatched to wipe the drool from their chins and salute them once he was done. Better to die in obscurity than that. Or — ha — in a little hutch in the Caribbean, surrounded by pirates.

"I'm not worth much at ransom, either," he added for the sake of completeness. 

The problem with ransom was that it required someone to pay it. His Majesty's Government might condescend to help in light of his past service, but that was relying on bureaucracy to act before the pirates got tired of waiting. Eoin had the lifelong public servant's low expectations for that. Family — maybe. He had some, for what it was worth. Two sisters he barely knew, their good marriages, their children and grandchildren whose names he could more or less keep straight, provided he didn't have to match them to a face. Some degree of cousin was a baronet and might or might not have money.

He could perhaps draft a note against his own very modest fortune. It had been quite some time since he'd taken a prize at sea, and in truth he'd never been much of a hunter, but on the other hand he'd never been a lavish spender and had instantly disliked men who'd come to him with some wealth-increasing scheme to drain his coffers dry. Perhaps his pocketbook would be fat enough to do the job.

If he could bring himself to write a cheque to James McGraw for his life.

No. No, he would not be doing that.

"I won't beg." Saying it seemed important. He slumped against the wall behind him, back aching. He waved a hand at James, vaguely toward the door. "Go make your decision, and I'll wait here. You've always had your own head."

It was a rabid fox sat across from him, face twisted in a snarl. "You don't dismiss me _here_ , sir. You will damned well talk until I am done with you."

"And what is it you want to hear? Should I beg you not to hurt me? Tell you secrets I don't possess? What are you waiting for, Mr. Flint?" Almost he regretted saying it. But no, damn it, that was what James had done, not him. Not his fault — 

"You ruined my life!"

It was the wail of the fox feeling the first hound's teeth. It was heartbreaking. And still it would savage the dog if it could.

Eoin's fists clenched. His back straightened, a lifetime of command refusing to let this — this outlaw, this stupid fucking boy who'd grown too big for his boots, he would _not_ cow Eoin, and damn the cost. " _I_ ruined you?" he spat back. "I _warned_ you. I spent twenty years warning you what people like that do to people like us. I told you what would happen when dear 'Thomas' and 'Miranda' got what they wanted from you, I let you go on that mad mission to get you away from them, and the moment you set foot on England's shore again I hear that you've been biting the pillow for that _bud s_ —" 

" **Finish that sentence!** " James roared over the sound of his chair toppling. He was on his feet, towering over Eoin. "Call him one foul thing and your life ends _here, now_." His sides heaved like a horse ready to break. Fox-mad eyes.

Eoin stood to face him. Still James looked down on him. Age had taken Eoin's stature along with so much else. Surely it would be but a moment before James took him by the throat and dashed him into pieces.

Some angel stayed James's hand, and Eoin could see him shake with the effort of it. 

James said, "Thomas _made_ me," and his voice shook like the rest of him. "He made me honest for the first time in my life. Can you imagine what it's like to hide, fumble your way around the dark for years — for your _life_ , without even being able to ask where you are. Because anyone you asked could kill you, and anyone you _loved_ — the moment you discovered what I was —" 

"Discovered?" Eoin asked, incredulous. "Son, I've known you take the windward passage since you were seventeen years old. How in hell do you think you got home that night at Colonel Rowan's?"

James went pale.

Eoin remembered exactly how he'd looked that night. Drunk enough his legs couldn't hold a course, and saying all manner of things. Mouth-shaped bruises on his neck and fingermarks on his arms. His thighs, too. Hennessey had stripped his trousers and checked to see if he'd been bleeding. To see if there were men he'd needed to kill, really, rather than merely wish them dead. Not so; James had been _happy_.

Eoin's fault. The boy'd had no business being there at all, but young men who danced were always in demand and Rowan's wife had asked that he be brought along. Eoin should have said no, and failing that he should have kept an eye out. _Someone_ should have kept watch, with all those young men and girls just come out, and soldiers everywhere you turned. But Eoin had gone to the card tables and it had been hours before he'd thought to check on what the kids were doing.

He'd thought that James's temper would keep him safe.

"You knew." All the fury that had been in James's voice was gone, just gone. He mouthed the words again like they were something foreign. _You knew._

Eoin stepped past him, three strides to the haphazard table. There was nothing on it, but it was something else to look at so that he didn't have to see whatever was in James's face.

He told the table, "I'd hoped you would grow out of it."

The short, sharp laugh from across the room was all the response that deserved.

He'd been too pretty. Eoin had no taste for the Greek himself, but he knew men too well to mistake trouble when he saw it. At that age James had been all trouble: coltish and quick, adolescent awkwardness melting like the last of his baby fat and leaving honed muscle behind. Smooth-skinned and bright-eyed, and even that ridiculous hair had had its own appeal. It caught the eye.

Anyone else would've had the sense to dye it.

His father had been long dead by then and and his name was worth less than nothing. Any protection he'd had from men with roving eyes had come from Captain Hennessey's hand held over him and James's own fists. After that night, Eoin had known him for what he was, a Hyacinth looking for an Apollo. Taunting the West Wind.

Eoin drew vague patterns on the tabletop with one forefinger. The wood grain was rough but pleasant to the touch. Here — James's habit was catching.

"'Thou shalt not kill,'" he quoted, glancing over his shoulder. James hadn't moved at all, but that his head was bowed. "That one isn't difficult to figure out. But I've been … I don't know how many wars this makes. Hh. Memory's going. Must be getting old." 

He turned around fully, facing his demons. Facing James. "I'm a good soldier and a damned fine seaman, and I've broken that commandment from the day I learned to load a gun. I've never had a parson on my ship when I could help it, and that's one of the reasons why. Couldn't stand to hear a man bleat about fleeing sin on Sunday when our pay hinged on killing as many Frenchies as we could by Tuesday night. What separates me from the harlot and the sodomite is that my variety of sin is more useful to my king. Just that."

James faced him then, his jaw set in that way that Eoin well knew: that stubborn, stoic pose that made beating the child pointless. He might feel the pain but he'd never seemed to fear it. And all the while he'd keep his own counsel and plan to do it all again, because any amount of pain was worth it to be proven right.

"You knew," James said, a raw-voiced man. "You _knew_ and still, as soon as Alfred snapped his fingers, you — You stand here and claim all sins are equal, but you called me shameful, monstrous, some fucking _thing_. _Why_? Why were you so eager to have me gone?" That snarl was in his voice again, an animal caught in a trap, a bewildered boy wanting answers.

"Because I wanted you to live!" Hennessey yelled with a desperate wildness of his own. "Ashbourne came to me with the noose already knotted and I wasn't going to let that bastard have you!" His fist came down on the table, and old weak fool that he was, still he was stronger than that ramshackle thing; he broke it clean through, its legs bucking to the floor.

Exhausted, all at once. He needed to lie down, but James was by the bed. He said, "Shame isn't fatal. That I'm still alive should tell you that."

He looked away.

"You were supposed to live."

Eoin Hennessey had been born on a hill in the far west of Ulster, seventy years ago or a little more. His family was not distinguished and not wealthy but they were gentlemen. For a hundred years they'd always backed the right king. They owned land that others farmed. Their sons learned enough Latin to pass school and enough Gaelic to woo pretty maids behind the stables. Eoin could not remember a time he hadn't known his place. The Navy protected England and all her lands by making certain every man aboard a ship knew his place. There was no reason an officer and a gentleman ought to have taken on a common sailor's orphaned boy, except that it had seemed right. For many years it had seemed right.

That boy asked him, quietly, "D'you think that's enough? Do you imagine that if you just wait here long enough, I'll see that you were right?"

Enough to save Eoin's life now? Clearly not, but then, he hadn't been trying. Eoin shook his head. "No. Maybe at the time … no. I knew what your position meant to you. I knew that just being alive wouldn't make you happy. But I believed you could live without that, and _I_ would know you were alive somewhere." He laughed, hollow like the throbbing in his hand. "I've learned a few things about living since I saw you last. I may have underrated happiness." 

It hadn't broken him. He'd stayed at his command for years. Done his duty. Heard, every night, the words that James had said. 

_Sir, I can explain —_

And the ones he hadn't. 

_Father, please —_

He shut his eyes because he was dizzy. The past kept impinging on the present. The hard, cruel man who would shortly order Eoin's death; the devastated, golden youth he had savaged; the orphaned boy, ten or so and scrawny, who'd squeezed in among the water barrels and tried to muffle his grief with sackcloth stuffed in his mouth; they all seemed to be standing in the same place all at once.

So he spoke to all of them. "James. Son. I'm sorry. I am so damned sorry, and I've been wanting to say that for so long. Not for your life, but for everything else. Everything I had a part in, anything I could have stopped — I'm sorry."

James barely made a sound moving across the hollow wooden floor, and the door shut softly when he left.

Eoin stumbled to the cot and sat down, bent over double, his face held in his hands. The fucking birds had stopped their natter, but the mosquitos still whined.

The Navy wasn't enough to sustain a man. The Navy gave you brothers, but it took them away without warning. A man needed more than that to live. Before he'd made the list he had married a woman named Madeline, dark-haired and pale. She'd been no beauty, a feature they'd had in common. Her smile had been radiant. 

While he'd been in the Channel his wife had died birthing a son who'd never taken a breath, a month before he should have been born. That had been enough. He'd kill no more women and needed no other wife. The better sort of paid lady knew how to avoid catching his bastard, and she'd never miss him when he was gone.

They'd meant to name him Arthur, after her father.

He should lie down. It had been a tiring day. Old men needed their rest if they wanted to live a little longer.

Widowhood had greeted him on the dock. Packet boats were always spotty. The Navy suspected men at sea did better without the distraction of news from home. He'd found her marked out in the churchyard. Just her name, _Mrs. Madeline Hennessey_ ; below it, _In the Hope of the Resurrection._ That was good. She'd never liked to draw attention to herself.

The baby was buried with her, he thought. He'd been told. He'd asked the rector about his son. The busy man had reminded him that baptism was the gate to Heaven, and of course those born dead could not be baptised. 

What if he'd strangled the rector then and there as he'd been minded to? A short drop and a sudden stop, and his conscience free of guilt. 

The door opened again, and it was James, a dark vile bottle in his hand and two battered cups.

"Drink," James said. "Have a drink with me. And then I want to introduce you to Thomas."

James smiled when he said the name, and though it was shadowed it was happy. Wet around the eyes. Thomas was supposed to be dead, but so was Eoin, so he could hardly throw stones. Thomas made James happy. Things were happening here that Eoin didn't understand. James had gone away and just now he had come back, like there'd been something he'd been waiting for. 

Eoin Hennessey took the cup that he was given and drank deep.

**Author's Note:**

> James walked in there the first time intending to convince himself to kill Hennessey.
> 
> The "ado" that brought Hennessey to the Caribbean is the [War of the Quadruple Alliance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Quadruple_Alliance), which did eventually lead to fighting in the islands, though not in the way it probably will here. It's 1719, maybe?
> 
> The term Hennessey doesn't finish using to describe Thomas is _bud sallogh_ , which is, uh … not nice.
> 
> Modern-day Anglicans are rather more optimistic about the salvation of unbaptised infants, and even in the 17th century the beliefs were far from universally grim. That rector was just an asshole.
> 
> The party at the Rowan house was neither the first nor the last time somebody ran a train on James McGraw.


End file.
